McCann troll commits suicide

Anonymity has a lot to answer for. Why are we all so afraid of using our own names ? Do we have something to hide ? Is it so that no-one will know who it is when we are being unkind ? Or not telling the truth ?I am probably being very naïve but on Facebook people use their own names don't they? I certainly do.

jingl This wasn't the first time I had reported an occasional faint smell of gas in the house but this was the first time it had been located as coming up through drains in the cellar, which meant it was a mains leakage.

But putting aside the my public service. It was seeing the utter chaos outside, hearing all the reports on the radio and the talk on the buses and in the street for weeks after and nursing in my bosom the knowledge that my phone call had been the catalyst for the chaos. I could have rung my local radio station, told them the part I played in the event, got my photo in the papers, but I didn't, I just kept quiet and gave a secret smile every time someone mentioned all the problems they had had and described the chaos. The sense of power it engendered in me, as I said, quite horrified me.

I suspect that is this secret sense of power that impells these trolls. None of them want to come out and talk big when they are discovered.

I have refrained from setting up a twitter account, even tho' many of my fellow writers have done so, and some even go so far as to say it's a'must' in the social network toolbox. I actually hate the term'Social Network' . It smacks to me of a 'look at me, and how clever/successful/interesting I am'. I get fed-up enough with acquaintances (certainly not F&Fs) on Facebook pushing their latest self published book on Kindle, most of which have been turned down by umpteen publishers for the obvious reason when you start to read them. The so called 'friends' are only asking to join my FB account because they think I will help their sales.

IMHO what starts off as a 'fun' thing to do ...ie letting followers know what you're up to or tweeting inane comments, can become an obsession, picking up and commenting on every bit of news out there....with no moderation or censorship - especially if you don't have a lot else in your life. This is where Twitter can be so nasty. The publicity-seeking Sally Bercow came grievously unstuck when she leapt on the pedophile bandwagon and falsely tweeted a damning condemnation of Lord MacAlpine... a sick man who's accuser later admitted he was 'mistaken.'

So-called 'celebs' have a lot to answer for as they feed the 'followers' frenzy... X has a million followers, Y has 2 million and so forth. And what sad souls have the time or inclination to keep checking on who has tweeted what and where? I don't particularly like the expression but...Get a Life!

I think it's unfair to the many many thousands of people who have mental health problems to assume that 'when somebody behaves in a vicious way, 'mental health problems' are at the root of it.
Shame is a very powerful emotion.
I think it is shame that Brenda Leyland couldn't live with.

Or perhaps just humiliation?

I wonder if she might have been viewed as having a 'mental condition' if she was interviewed on some ' sink estate' in tracky bottoms and hoody instead of in her nice respectable village. Just wondering.

I agree that it is too easy to blame everything on mental health problems; nor do I think that people who are evil are automatically also "crazy".

But, anyone who believes that the McCanns orchestrated the disappearance of their daughter/were in on it/want to benefit financially (as I believe was the case in this instance from many of the tweets posted) is definitely not rational. Surely? (forgetting for the moment about formal diagnosis, just as a general rule of thumb). I'm not saying that because I'm trying to excuse her behaviour, just trying to puzzle out why anyone would do something like that. Brenda Leyland would sometimes tweet incessantly from 7 a.m. to past midnight, that to me is not "normal" behaviour. If nothing else, it's obsessive.

Just read the article and seen that Brenda Leyland is described as a 'victim'.
Surely this use of the word is belittling the plight of real victims - victims of child abuse, or Ebola, for example.
The word victim implies that the sufferer has no control over their fate - well I'm sorry, but each one of us has the power to decide what we type onto our screens, and whether to press the send button.

I also get angry when people criticise the Sky reporter for doorstepping Mrs Leyland. He was an investigative reporter and doing his job, the same as the reporters who dug up all the disgusting stories about Saville etc. She knew what she was doing and it is too easy to find excuses. If we carried on that route we would excuse all people with criminal convictions as having some sort of mental illness. People who struggle with mental illness have enough on their plate without nasty people like her being given mental illness as an excuse.

I don't think Brenda Leyland was necessarily mentally ill, nor do I think she was evil. Obsessed, yes, definitely, but her views were no more irrational than many others. There are people who firmly believe that Diana was murdered by the Royal Family, and who are very vocal about it. Do we think they are all mad, or that they should shut up? Their views undoubtedly continue to cause distress to her sons who even the conspiracy theorists woukd have to agree are completely innocent parties. Yet they do not seem to attract the hatred this poor woman has been the target of. Why is this case different?

I have a friend who lives in Germany who tells me that the media portrayal of the McCanns is much less sympathetic there than here, and it is common to hear people express the view that the McCanns may have been implicated in Madeleine's disappearance. Is that because Germans are more likely to be mad, or irrational? Or simply because we are all influenced by the particular version of events presented to us by the media.

But it's not her suggestion that the McCanns were implicated, but how she expressed herself and the relentlessness of it, surely nightowl? I have only seen a few of the tweets, but I understand that they were, shall we say, forcibly and viciously expressed.
Would you describe those who attacked Mary Beard on Twitter and were subsequently exposed, as 'poor young men'?

Did they commit themselves to a horrible death at their own hands when they were found out Janeainsworth?

Not that I know of jingl, but I don't think that's the point.
Of course I feel great sympathy for anyone who is desperate enough to commit suicide, and their families, but I don't think the fact that this woman killed herself lessens the harm she had done.

But jane there is a huge difference between the abusive tweets directed at Mary Beard and the tweets posted by Brenda Leyland. Mary Beard was called something like 'you filthy old slut' and threatened with rape and other acts of violence. If Brenda Leyland had called the McCanns 'filthy child murderers' and threatened to kill them and their children I would most certainly not be defending her.

In fact I'm not actually defending her actions anyway, simply pointing out that I think we are being fed a version of what she did that is not really accurate. I don't think she was a troll in the true sense of the term, she did not address any tweets to the McCanns directly, and she did not make any threats. I may not like the way she chose to express herself but I do think she was a very minor player in a huge Internet community of conspiracy theorists on all sorts of topics. In that sense I think she was an easy target for a campaigning journalist. I would not like anyone to think I agree with what she did, but I am trying to take a balanced view. I'm obviously in a minority of one on here, but that's fine.

Alas, the internet has become what driving used to be [remember all the cases of road rage?]. If only people followed a code whereby you only say something on the internet to someone that you would say to their face things like this wouldn't happen. I don't do 'Twitter' but I know people that have stopped using it because of abusive comments .

It is the point ja. You asked "we're the young men who attacked Mary Beard on Twitter poor young men?" Answer, no they weren't. They didn't suffer for it as this woman obviously did.

And what harm did she actually do? Do you really think the McCanns bother to read stuff like that? I seriously doubt it.

That's not to say I condone it, but neither do I think she deserved to be outed to the world' media.

Nightowl - some of her tweets that I've seen reported are pretty vile. And the sheer number of them. It doesn't matter in one way whether the McCanns saw them or not - I wonder how we'd feel if vicious vile comments were bring made about us even if we didn't actually read them. I really can't understand the sympathy for her - is it because she was about our sort of age? I also feel that there is a string anti- McCann undercurrent in British society and I think that explains maybe some of the support she's getting.

Well, I can assure you there is nothing anti-McCanns in my thinking on this!

The tweets can all be read on the Internet. I haven't read all of them because there are too many, but I have got a sense of them. Form your own judgements.

I am neither anti-McCann nor sympathetic to Brenda Leyland. I just like to think I am fair, and try to judge on the basis of evidence. That would be the case if the so called 'troll' was a woman of my age or a 23 year old man.

It's good to see posters pointing out that people don't have to have mental health problems to behave badly.

To attribute cruelty to mental health does a real disservice to folks who do have mental health problems, yet do their best not to allow this to ruin the lives of those around them.

Suicide is a desperate act, leaving such pain in its wake. As others have said, there have always been nasty people, who hid behind the anonymity of poison pen letters. The internet is largely a very positive thing, but it has given free reign to some very nasty individuals.

Have I missed something on here? Has someone stated categorically that this lady did have a mental illness?

Still, I'm very glad to see people feeling the need to defend the thousands daily swallowing the Prozac (like me). Very kind.

I think since we no longer use euphemistic phrases like "they're a bit nuts" "got a screw loose" - and I understand why we don't - it's difficult to describe people that behave strangely or do odd things, other than by using the phrase "mental health problems" in a general sense. I suppose a better phrase would be "psychological problems"...

I guess there has always been mentally unbalanced people in society and these days the technology is just there literally at their fingertips.

That was you on Tuesday jingl. Ok it wasn't a statement that she had a mental illness, but the implication was clear.

The growth of this sort of thing on the internet should not be a surprise. There has always been a fine line between gossip, malicious gossip, bullying and libel.

I have always found gossip hard to understand. Why do people need to discuss those they don't know? This women said she had a right to an opinion but the right to free speech also carries duties and responsibilities.

I agree that anonymity is a problem. When Mary Beard was being abused it only took one person to say they knew the mother of the young man making some really vile (and possibly illegal) comments and could give MB the information when he suddenly became very apologetic. I think unmasking some of the worst of these "commentators" is a service to us all.